Well we would not see "hare-brained scheming" from Khrushchev of course (thats what the politburo actually called his stupid decisions), including the surprise de-Stalinization and virgin land campaigns. Both terribly mismanaged and dumb ideas that hurt the Soviet Union.

We'd probably see an intensification of the nuclear arms race, Malenkov was in charge of the nuclear program for a while so he'd want bigger and more ICBMs to provoke "missile envy" in the Americans. Though he wasn't more hawkish necessary, he'd probably still pursue some detente with the US like Khrushchev did early on.

I suspect we might still see a political thaw, but a more limited one. The Stalinist war-like conditions were past their time in the 1950s so some loosening of repression would make sense. Malenkov would probably not go as far as Khrushchev however. No deStalinization, maybe just a release of some prisoners and loosening of surveillance.

Malenkov was also a committed technocrat. He placed great value on skilled scientists and engineers and even fought to have political commissars removed from the fields of science and technology. Science would have flourished in the Soviet Union under him and maybe in later decades we would have seen mass computerization to improve the planned economy.

Speaking of economy he supported shifting economic resources to consumer goods and away from heavy industry to improve the standards of living and sending more money to peasant farmers on collective farms to incentivize production. Apparently this was expensive and did not pay off when he was Premier but I think he was just not given enough time. A transition to consumer goods would have made the Soviet Union more economicly competitive and improving the agricultural yields probably would have worked. It would have at least been more successful than the disaster that was the virgin lands campaign.

Apparently he was intelligent, agreeable, and pleasant. Which is like the polar opposite of Khrushchev the mad cowboy lol. Honestly the more I learn the more I wish this guy held on to his post. Stalin knew how to pick them :stalin-approval: